Back to Blog
Nuclear reactor meltdown in russia5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() Before this, nuclear electricity output had risen strongly due simply to better performance of the nuclear plants, with capacity factors leaping from 56% to 76% 1998-2003 and then on to 80.2% in 2009. ![]() It then increased slowly to over 200 TWh in 2018. In 2009 nuclear production was 163.3 TWh (83.7 TWh from VVER, 79.6 TWh from RBMK and other). Rosenergoatom is the sole nuclear utility, following consolidation in 2001. Retail electricity prices are relatively low – for households in 2010, about 9 c/kWh compared with the EU median of 18.5 cents. In mid-2010 the projected annual electricity demand growth to 2020 was put at 2.2%. New investment by 2030 of RUR 9800 billion in power plants and RUR 10,200 billion in transmission would be required. The scheme envisaged decommissioning 67.7 GWe of capacity by 2030, including 16.5 GWe of nuclear plant (about 70% of present capacity). A revised scheme in mid-2010 projected 1288 TWh demand in 20 TWh in 2030, requiring 78 GWe of new plant by 2020 and total 178 GWe new build by 2030, including 43.4 GWe nuclear. It envisaged a possible doubling of generation capacity from 225 GWe in 2008 to 355-445 GWe in 2030. In November 2009, the government's Energy Strategy 2030 was published, projecting investments for the next two decades. * In Russia, 'energy' mostly implies electricity. Some TGK companies (also supplying heat) are private, others such as TGK-3 or Mosenergo are owned by Gazprom. ![]() Other OGKs are owned by Inter RAO or Gazprom. OGK-4 (E.ON Russia) is 76% owned by E.ON, and OGK-5 (Enel Russia) is 56% owned by Enel. Some non-nuclear generators have been privatised, e.g. (Also, by 2020, the Western Siberian gas fields were expected to be so depleted that they would supply only one-tenth of current Russian output, compared with nearly three-quarters in about 2010.) Also there are major regional grid constraints so that a significant proportion of the capacity of some plants cannot be used. UES's gas-fired plants burn about 60% of the gas marketed in Russia by Gazprom, and plans were to halve this by 2020. Russia is one of the few countries without a populist energy policy favouring wind and solar generation the priority is unashamedly nuclear. In 2012 Gazprom exports were expected to reach $84.5 billion, $61 billion of this to Europe. Gazprom gas exports to western Europe increased by 20% over 2010 to 2016, and in 2015 were 158.6 billion cubic metres. First, demand rose strongly to 2010 after more than a decade of stagnation secondly some 50 GWe of generating plant (more than a quarter of it) in the European part of Russia is approcahing the end of its design lifetime and thirdly Gazprom cut back on the very high level of natural gas supplies for electricity generation because it can make about five times as much money by exporting the gas to the West (over 30% of EU gas comes from Russia). Russia's electricity supply, formerly centrally controlled by RAO Unified Energy System (UES)*, faced a number of acute constraints. Source: International Energy Agency and The World Bank. Import/export balance: 18.4 TWh net export (1.6 TWh imports 20.0 TWh exports) ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |